Read Online A Blood Seduction by Pamela Palmer - Free Book Online Page A

what it meant. Did it matter? She was at his mercy either way.
    “You will help Ernesta with the housecleaning and the laundry.”
    She looked at him warily. “That’s all?”
    “No. You will feed me. But I will not do what was done to you before. I will never take enough to weaken you.” He reached for her, his cool hand covering hers, drawing her gaze to his. “I promise you, cara, when I draw from your vein, you will feel pleasure.” His eyes turned smoky, his smile breaking slowly and turning very, very carnal. “When I slide my fangs into your neck, I will slide my cock into your body, and you will scream with pleasure, I promise you.”
    His words turned her at once hot. And cold.
    “Every fourth day, I will visit your bed to drink from you.”
    “Every fourth day?”
    “When I add you to my household, I will have four slaves.”
    Quinn jerked her arm away from his hand, realizing what he was saying. “You have sex with all of them?”
    His mouth twitched. “Not Horace.”
    She’d seen nothing intimate between him and Ernesta. A servant/master relationship and nothing more. Was that the way it would be with her? A quick feed and fuck every fourth day, then back to work cleaning his house? Was this to be her life?
    No, she couldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t accept it.
    “ Cara, ” the vampire said quietly, drawing her gaze back to his. “Do not attempt to escape me again. If you become too difficult, I will sell you to one of the Traders for the slave auction, and your fate will be far worse than here with me.” His fingers closed around her wrist in a cool vise. “There is no escape for you. Humans never escape Vamp City. If they did, you would have heard of it, yes? The missing would have returned. Yet none ever have.” He squeezed her wrist lightly. “Accept your fate, and you will be content here. I will see it so.”
    She didn’t argue with him, didn’t reply at all. Perhaps the best thing to do was let him think she’d given up.
    Heavy footsteps approached, and, a moment later, a man appeared in the doorway, a broad-chested, stocky man, with little hair on top of his head but a thick, bushy, graying beard that shimmered just like Susie’s hair. “It’s done, Master.”
    The vampire nodded once, released her, and rose. “See Quinn to her room, Horace.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    As Quinn rose, the vampire met her gaze again. “Rest today. Tomorrow, you will begin your duties. All of them.” Then he turned and walked out of the room, leaving her to stare after him.
    All of them. She shivered even as her body warmed.
    “Come along, girl,” Horace said gruffly.
    With a frustrated sigh, she followed Horace into a compact entry hall and up the hardwood stairs to the bedroom she’d left less than an hour before.
    “You were a fool to try to escape, girl,” Horace said, as they reached the door. “The master’s the best of the lot of them. He don’t hurt his slaves like the others do. And he don’t give us over to other vamps.”
    “But he feeds from you.”
    “ ’Course he do. Feeds from my wrist. It don’t hurt none.”
    “What about your family?”
    “Family’s long dead, young’un. Been dead for more ’n a century. Now git you in there and forget everything that came before. Don’t none of it matter no more. This is your home, now.”
    Feeling stronger than she had earlier, but still more tired than she should, she walked into the room, allowing Horace to close and lock the door behind her.
    The linen rope was no longer tied to the dresser leg. She couldn’t see it at all. And the curtains made no movement, making it clear that the window had been closed.
    Suddenly, she remembered the hammering. Her eyes widened, and she ran to the window, pushed the curtains aside, and stared at the boards that had been nailed across it. He’d boarded up the window!
    Gripping the boards, she pulled, the wood digging into her fingertips, refusing to budge.
    “Shit!” How in the hell am I